


Brake

by notraelet



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Street Racing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5539376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notraelet/pseuds/notraelet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>One of the first things you learn when you try to become Ronan Lynch’s friend is this: don’t give him ultimatums.</i>
</p>
<p>Adam disapproves of Ronan's nightly activities. Ronan decides to show him just how responsible he can be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asael/gifts).



> For my roommate who is terrible and wrote me something way more painful than this.
> 
> I don't know anything about cars.

Adam’s nose wrinkles distastefully when he eases himself into the passenger seat of the BMW. Even after the light rain of the morning, he can still smell the traces of burnt rubber, imagines the black marks of the clutch rubbed raw. He thinks about the brake pads, realizes that Ronan probably hasn’t gotten them looked at despite how hard he runs his car and how often he’s been out recently. Ronan is no stranger to thrills and disaster, but Adam wonders if Ronan takes into consideration the fact that his car might give out before he does.

He imagines the sound, metal on metal. When he closes his eyes, he can see the sparks underneath the wheels, illuminated in the darkness of the night.

His lips press together as Ronan flops himself carelessly into the driver’s seat. Adam’s own car- the Hondayota if Ronan is feeling generous, the Shitmobile if not- is nestled in the mechanic shop he works at with a crack in the radiator that won’t be fixed for another three paydays. Therefore, he needs a ride to school. Therefore, Ronan Lynch and his shark-nosed BMW come to the rescue more often than not, run raw and sagging along the pavement by the time 7am hits.

“Spare me,” is the first thing that Ronan says, and Adam supposes that he knows what a lecture looks like before it can leave someone’s mouth. Six months ago, he’d snap his mouth shut and sulk, _fine, let him get hurt, let him crash, let him come to the predictable end of his dangerous actions._

Now, Adam knows that Ronan won’t walk away if he’s challenged. That sometimes, Ronan _needs_ to be challenged. It’s not that he has any false ideas about who’s really in control here- because that person will always be Richard Campbell Gansey the Third- but rather, he knows that sometimes fighting with Ronan is more sport than blood and if he’s fast enough and clever enough, he can get the other boy to grudgingly roll over.

“At least tell me you’re getting your brakes checked.”

Ronan rolls his eyes and jams the ignition, before backing out of the church parking lot. No seatbelt. 

Christ, Adam feels like a mom. Is this how Gansey feels all the time?

“The fucking _point_ is not to hit the brakes,” Ronan explains, like he’s talking to a child- well, cursing at one, but Adam doubts that Ronan would censor himself for the nuns at St. Agnes, let alone a five year old.

“Let me look at them, then.”

It’s a challenge as much as it is that some part of him just wants viciously to make sure that Ronan will at least not die in one of the many preventable ways that he can be killed.

Ronan, always true to form, rolls his eyes as he starts down the street, breaking the speed limit within the first block.

“Fuck off. It’s a dream car, it doesn’t need that.”

“Are you serious?” Adam finds himself asking, incredulous, “you’ve never had it checked?”

“Don’t get up my _ass_ about this. You’re not Gansey.”

Ronan means it to sting, but it doesn’t. Adam knows what he is and what he is not, and Gansey, with all of his kingly attributes and his charisma and charm and grip on other end of Ronan’s leash lies firmly in the latter column.

So he tightens his jaw.

One of the first things you learn when you try to become Ronan Lynch’s friend is this: _don’t give him ultimatums._ He will always pick the painful option, be it out of stubbornness or spite, and it will always hurt more than you expect it to. If there’s a _take it or leave it_ , he leaves, if there’s a _this or me_ , it’s never you. It’s not that he doesn’t care or that he finds you lacking, it’s that he hates the _demand_ , where you ask him what he values more- and more often than not, his response is more of a _fuck you_ than it is anything genuine.

But someone has to say it.

“Look: I appreciate you driving me to school, but I can’t afford to go to the hospital when your brakes give out and we get T-boned in an intersection.”

To his credit, Adam says it amicably. It’s not heated or challenged or fought, it’s fact. It’s Adam caring about himself because someone has to, because Ronan won’t let Adam care about him. His tone is calm, but the implication is clear: _fix it or I find another way to school._

What that way is, he doesn’t know. The nearest school bus stop is easily a mile and a half from the church and he can’t afford to move. Gansey could give him rides of course, but it would kill him to ask- but it’s all a moot point now. He said it, he has to stick to it.

Ronan doesn’t react at first- he’s quiet enough that Adam almost wonders if he’d even heard him at all. He turns left, keeps his eyes on the road, his hand on the gearshift. Belatedly, Adam realizes that his knuckles are white with tension.

Even more belatedly, he realizes that Ronan should have turned right.

“Ronan-”

Arterial street, freeway entrance, morning traffic, Adam’s heart clutches in his throat when Ronan slams his foot down on the gas, despite the smattering of cars around them. He careens forward, locks his fingers on the handle above the door, and holds his breath.

The BMW swerves between the cars on the freeway, ever the asshole making things worse that everyone hates. Adam turns to look at Ronan, opens his mouth to yell at him, but holds off, just for a moment.

He’s more focused here than Adam has ever seen him. More centered, more _present_ than he is when they’re in Cabeswater, when he’s taking care of Chainsaw, when he’s getting punched.

It’s alien, savage. Ronan yanks on the wheel and turns them off the freeway, down the curving roads that leads them in the vague direction of Cabeswater. There’s hardly ever anybody on these roads, and in a split-second, Adam realizes what Ronan’s intent is.

They go faster.

The road has sharper turns than the freeway, and Adam nearly swallows his tongue the first time Ronan takes a curve at top speed, brake, clutch, skid, drift, _fuck_ , and he’s sure that he’s white in the face, but something brings him back to Ronan.

When the pounding of his heart is normalized, and he feels like he can breathe through the roar of the engine, Adam can look at him again and see- well, he doesn’t know what to see. A gladiator in the storm of battle, sword gripped tight in his hands, blood on his face, waiting for the next wave of enemies, waiting, focused, a snake in the grass coiled and tense and all mercurial anticipation, waiting to strike, waiting to lunge, a sniper on a roof, watching the target through a lens, finger on the trigger, waiting to line up the shot, focused, intense, waiting, waiting, _waiting_ -

Ronan shifts down and slams on the brakes.

It lurches Adam forward in his seat and he’s suddenly dizzy with the spin Ronan puts on it, sliding again into a circle, lurching the car around and leaving a gritty stripe of blackened rubber on the road as the BMW spins and comes to a perfect stop, 180 degrees from where it started.

He breathes for the first time in what feels like ages. Ronan looks over at him, just a casual glance, breaking his immeasurable focus for the first time just to see him. And fuck him, _fuck_ him, there’s a little smirk on the edge of his mouth and he shifts gears again and they start to move.

“Looks like my brakes work fine.”

Adam opens his mouth to say _fuck you_ , but the words are stolen from his throat as Ronan guns it again, back in the direction that they came.

He’s mad. He’s fucking _furious_. Ronan missed his point, he’s pissed, it’s enough for him to say _fuck it_ and ask Gansey to start giving him rides to school.

But.

He circles back to it in the end, when they finally hit the school parking lot and Adam realizes that they haven’t even missed the first bell. The look on Ronan’s face on the road. The focus. The anticipation. He finally identifies the missing piece as _joy_.

Adam isn’t Ronan. He doesn’t get that feeling from flirting with death. But he does feel it somehow, deep behind his breastbone, when he thinks about Ronan’s ironclad concentration, his determination, his fucking _grit_.

Which is, in the end, how Adam Parrish knows that he’s well and truly fucked.


End file.
